


First Encounters

by Leonawriter



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, written for strifesodos week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 06:34:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14971157
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: He introduces himself, and it strikes him that this is the first time he has done so, the first time they had actually, properly, met.





	First Encounters

The first time they met, it was more of a non-meeting. Genesis was more concerned with Hollander and the fact that the man had been lying to him about his ability to find a cure, and with Zack's presence, to notice the trooper who was trying - valiantly, but failing - to detain Hollander.

The kid had guts, if nothing else.

He continued to focus on just about anything other than the trooper; even an army grunt of higher rank than that would fall easily to his blade if he felt the need to be anything other than dismissive, after all.

...

He knew that Zack had been at Junon. Because of  _course_ Zack had been at Junon.

If anyone had asked him to pick out any specific trooper from the many crowds, he would have been stumped, however. Troopers were not SOLDIER, were not important, and as long as they didn't get in his way, Genesis couldn't really say that he cared.

...

He saw that there was  _someone_ in a blue army uniform in Nibelheim, but the only reason he had to take note was the fact that this was one more set of eyes and ears, and a slight irritant when he was exiting the reactor.

He had let his Copies do all of the actual work on that one. He had been tired, and distracted, and the last thing he had experienced had been a rather final rejection that had set him in a foul mood.

It wasn't as though the trooper even often took their helmet off, anyway.

...

By the time he intercepts Zack on the highway, he knows the trooper's name. The information, however, comes from what little he could find by way of medical files and reports.

He isn't interested in the  _trooper_. He isn't even interested in  _Zack._ All he cares about are the cells they carry within them, and what they might mean for  _him._

...

If he's honest, he doesn't get what Zack sees in the trooper. Ex-trooper now, he should say, since he was neither serving in Shinra's army nor wearing the army's uniform, but in that case he would be an ex-SOLDIER, and for some reason he's never been able to - or willing to - put his finger on, Genesis isn't quite ready to make that distinction.

When Zack carries him back out of the Banora Underground, puts him down on the ground next to the chair on the other side to Angeal - not-Angeal, because all of the reports had said that  _Angeal did not degrade_ , and this man was degrading, just like he had been, and more than that, he wad  _dying_ , but if he thought about that too hard then it felt like Angeal dying  _all over again_ \- it's the first time he hears Zack call the trooper by his name, or rather, the first time he actually takes it in.

 _Cloud_ , he thinks to himself as consciousness drifts away from him.  _I've flown among the clouds. I wonder if you would have enjoyed it like I did, Sephiroth... the one good thing about being a monster._

...

When he wakes up, he is underground, and there are no clouds underground.

He seals himself away, because he knows that he is dangerous and his body is dangerous in the wrong hands, which is anyone's hands but his own, and the lake reflects only the ceiling of the cave.

...

He first sees Cloud as a flash of a spell and a blur of black and silver and gold in the distance, and decides to watch and wait. 

 _This is the one that Zack wanted to protect_ , he realises. He can see some of Zack's style even now. 

He can also see some of Sephiroth, although it is much more subtle, and much more akin to the way in which he and Angeal had gained echoes of the younger man's style through fighting him - which makes him wonder, just how someone like this  _Cloud_ could have taken on a dead man, or if it really were just the S-cells having that much of an impact.

...

His opportunity comes by chance when he was minding his own business and the next thing he knows, screams are assaulting his ears, high-pitched and irritating, and-

_reminding him of swords in civilian towns and burning villages_

-he still doesn't have a decent replacement for Rapier yet, but no one took his materia, and he had grown up with  _Angeal_ , who had always preferred to use his fists when he hadn't had to use a sword, and had wrestled with him much to their parents' distaste.

It felt good to fight at full strength again. 

And then the monsters were misshapen, charred messes in the ruins of the city, and the two children were racing over to-

Black clothes, not quite like a SOLDIER's. Mako blue eyes. Blond hair that stuck up every which way like a chocobo's crest. A sword big enough to rival Angeal's Buster Sword.

Genesis wasn't well acquainted with the practice of making oneself look  _less_ threatening or intimidating, but he hoped that the effort at least was appreciated.

From the look of bemused incredulity, Cloud wasn't exactly sold.

He sticks out one empty hand, and smiles with all of the charm that had once served him so well at executive functions in a building long since destroyed.

"Genesis Rhapsodos, SOLDIER First Class," he says by means of introduction, uncertain of the way that Cloud's eyes narrow at his self-proclaimed SOLDIER status and rank. 

It had taken him a long road to regain his SOLDIER honour and pride. Things would become difficult if that were no longer... acceptable. Or trusted.

The moment passed, however, and Cloud's eyes passed him by after a cursory investigation of his face as though they had never once met.

It shouldn't hurt, he tells himself. It shouldn't. It isn't as though they'd ever really  _met_ before - it isn't as though those meetings were ones that he would have  _wanted_ someone else to remember.

It still does.

"Cloud," Cloud says. "Strife."  _Of course_ , Genesis thinks.  _Of course someone like him would have a name like_ _that._ "Raye. Este. What've we told you about playing so close to Midgar."

"I didn't mean to get this far," the girl said, still looking like she was going to start crying again any minute. Genesis hoped that she wouldn't. "But I was chasing Patch and then Raye came after me, and-"

He tuned the rest out, focusing instead on the way Cloud sighed. 

"Well? What do you say when someone saves your life?"

"You say thank you!" the kids chorused. 

To  _him._

He almost misses the amusement on Cloud's face as they do so.

...

_("Thank you", he later says in the church, after he's realised that Zack is now dead - dead like Angeal, like Sephiroth, like so many others. Like most of Midgar, it looked like. And yet, Genesis was alive, even now._

_"Thank you," he says, because even if Zack hadn't been the one to cure him, he had been the one to remind him how to live again, and that was just as important.)_

**Author's Note:**

> I had another idea for this, but that's what spiralled out into being something bigger, with other characters coming first, so... this wanted to be written.
> 
> I'm not really all that great at writing romance, and I my Cloud is aro/ace spec anyway, but... I can still have fun with it, and I do love the character dynamic here. So I guess it's something where the relationship *could* go somewhere later on? Or... something like that.


End file.
